When Cortes marched his army to the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan in 1521, his troops encountered a city like no other. The megalopolis lay shimmering on Lake Texcoco, twice the size of any Spanish city. “I do not know how to describe it, seeing things we did that had never been heard of or seen before, not even dreamed about,” wrote one conquistador.

Among the marvels were a vast symmetrical temple where human captives were sacrificed to the sun god; various zoos for the emperor Montezuma, and a vast marketplace where the Aztec traded a mellow green fruit. They called the ahuacate from a Nahuatl word meaning “bollock”. We call it the avocado.

Almost 500 years later the Mesoamerican civilisations lie in ruins but their staples of tomatl (tomato) and xocolatl (chocolate) have become everyday to us. However, it seems the avocado still casts a special spell. It first appeared in British supermarkets in 1962 (there is some dispute between M&S and Sainsbury’s over who was responsible) but with the advent of the digital age, it has become a phenomenon. A troubling one. In fact, you might wonder if “Montezuma’s revenge” has been much more subtle than previously supposed. He is subjecting Christendom to slow death by avocado.

So I don’t know if you’ve glanced at Instagram recently but it currently looks a bit like this: avocado on toast, Met Ball, someone’s baby, avocado on toast, someone else’s baby, avocado on toast, Met Ball, someone’s baby eating avocado on toast, people wearing avocado on toast to the Met Ball. Avocado is officially the most photographed ingred-ient of the age of photographing ingred-ients (someone keeps stats). Those who are especially insufferable call it “avo-toast”.

Why so common? Well, not only do avocados look delicious with minimal preparation: the cool pastel yellow and pistachio green always set off by a scattering of chilli flakes, maybe a few toasted pumpkin seeds, don’t you find? They are found in all the restaurants where people want to photograph themselves, from new-wave Mexican fast-food places to Peruvian speakeasies to Pan-Pacific sushi joints to Aussie breakfast cafés to Paleo pop-ups.

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And such are the nutritional marvels of the avocado, they’re on every orthorexic’s diet plan too — playing the role that cheese does for normal people. (“Oooh, cheese! I love cheese, me” has become “I have the BEST guacamole recipe. The best!”*) Social media idol Ella Woodward — whose Deliciously Ella: Awesome Ingredients and Incredible Food that You and Your Body Will Love recently became the fastest-selling debut cookbook of all time — considers the avocado the most awesome ingredient of all. “I am completely obsessed with guacamole,” she writes. “Really, it is my favourite food. If I was to live the rest of my life on a dessert island [sic] for the rest of my life, guacamole would absolutely be my food of choice.”

And you can have it on a dessert island too, since fashionista foodies Hemsley + Hemsley have dreamed up a “guilt-free” avocado and lime cheesecake. Calgary Avansino, the clean-living evangelist often found in the pages of Vogue, is constantly going on about their omega-3s and their good fats. Amelia Freer helped Grammy-winning Sam Smith lose a million kilos with avocado oil and avocado smoothies. When you factor in avocado’s double life as a a beauty product, you can see why Buzzfeed once concluded: “The avocado is not an ingredient. It’s a lifestyle.” This was in their seminal article, 27 Next-Level Ways to Avocado, which include not only a vegan mayonnaise but a deep-conditioning hair mask and a heavy-duty foot scrub.

Now this is not to disparage the cool, cool taste of the avocado, or the benefits of eating healthily. Even if sometimes you buy one and it’s all brown and yuck in the middle and other times you buy one and it NEVER GETS RIPE. However, the unhappy fact is that the avocado is one of the most ecological damaging fruits you can buy. It’s the embodiment of the classic confusion of “ethical” and “feelgood” that you find so often in the aisles of Whole Foods, where artisanal water is imported from Fiji and quinoa is priced so high that the Bolivian farmers can no longer afford to eat it.

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Turn up the tumeric

Avocadomania, like so many modern phenomena, is rooted in California. Avocado orchards first took root there about a century ago (true fact: it was originally known as the “alligator pear”) but when Mexican imports opened up in the Nineties, the Californian farmers had to sell a lot of avocados to keep up. It meant prices fell just at the moment that nutritional research coalesced around the idea that avocados were good for you. Avocado consumption duly quintupled in the US in the past 15 years.

However, the avocado is native to tropical Mexico and not the Californian desert. It means avocados have one of the largest “water footprints” of any crop: it takes around 100 litres of water to grow a single avocado. The three-year drought in California has a lot to do with such unsustainable farming practises — and says a lot that it was only when the fast-food chain Chipotle threatened to withdraw its guacamole that anyone to take note. As Adam Sternbergh wrote in New York Magazine recently: “If you want to think through what climate change might mean for your daily life, the fate of the avocado is a good way to start.”

Meanwhile, as Americans seek alternative supply, the “green gold” (as the Mexicans call it) has come under the control of drug lords in the province of Michoacan. Between the dustbowl avocados and the blood avocados, the ethical American doesn’t know where to turn.

Good stuff: the avocado (Picture: AFP/Getty)

We have even less reason to be smug, back in the Old World. In our clement maritime climate, you can’t grow avocados with any amount of water. Our avocados tend to come from South Africa and Kenya, Peru and Chile, or Spain and Israel, according to season since we have come to expect “Ripe and Ready” in our supermarkets all year round. That means that they don’t just consume a huge amount of water. They are among the worst offenders when it comes to food miles. Every Instagram snap of guilt-free dip inches us closer to eco-disaster.

What is especially sad about this is that it’s not as if we live in a country where good things don’t grow. It’s hard to credit it but the English used to look down on French and Italian cooking, believing our own produce was so good that we didn’t need to mess with it. Or even that, in the more recent past, we didn’t simply assimilate Californian lifestyle trends via social media but actually created our own. Peas! Peas are good. Eat peas. #peas.

You would imagine that some sort of patriotic rural Tory would make something of all this — but according to polling data, Conservative voters are 25 per cent more likely to buy avocados than the average shopper.

It only goes to show how deracinated we have become, how implicated in the global flow of lifestyle trends and global capital and climate change. And you thought you’d got through a whole article without any reference to politics. But the Sun God will have his sacrifice.

Do try this at home

Take three ripe avocados and a dozen or so finely chopped cherry tomatoes; mash with one finely diced shallot, a clove of garlic, a green chilli (deseeded) and the juice of one lime. Season with copious salt, pepper and a sprinkle of smoked paprika. You’re welcome.